Inner Legacy Read Free

going to be a labour with little love attached.
    I phoned Richard and cancelled our Friday get together and told him I was off for a couple of months maybe less and that I would phone him when I got back.
     
    "Lucky sod" he said "I wish I could take off like that. Don't forget a stick of rock." he joked.
     
    One of these days I actually would buy one and bring it home with me.
    I liked and enjoyed the drive to Bay View as it was an easy journey on the motorway and took just over three hours, long enough for both myself and the cat. The Lodge was well placed and about fifteen minutes away from the old seaside resort of Morecambe. I had become quite fond of this faded old queen of resorts. Lots of work had been done to improve the seafront and it catered well for day trippers but they were a fickle lot only appearing when the weather was good. It was an uphill struggle for many of the retailers and few if any took their fortnight holiday as they would have done in the days of glory.
    I wouldn't lock myself in however as I would need a break from the hard slog and I promised myself a time out each day for a coffee. If it was open I would drop by the caught-in-a- time-warp Bruccianis where nothing had changed since the 1930s and I sometimes wondered if the menu had remained the same for all these years, notwithstanding that it had a lovely ambience and served the best espresso or black coffee I had ever tasted.
    When I had first started to frequent the area on a regular basis there had been one or two really old fashioned tea/coffee rooms like Harts where the waitresses still wore black dresses with white frilly aprons and I could get a really good custard slice along with an okay coffee. These places were now gone and some had gone over to the coffee chain giants, I avoided them like the plague, the coffee being of a poor quality in any that I tried. I only drink black coffee and I guess the actual awful taste of the coffee was usually disguised under all the foamed milk and syrups. I was and am a coffee snob. I'd rather have an old fashioned instant coffee in a seaside cafe than be assaulted by these industrial machines that produce an undrinkable, rip your stomach lining off, acid apology for coffee.
    I packed on Friday afternoon and gathered together all that I needed. I stood by my old typewriter and thought about taking it with me but decided not to clutter myself with belongings. I phoned to cancel the papers and apologised for the short notice.
    By dinnertime I was all ready for the morning.
    I spent the evening listening to music and reading and trying my best to relax my muscles as I knew they would soon be sore as I crouched over the notebooks and worked on endless scraps of paper. It really was like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw.
    As the evening drew on to night I put the book down and let my thoughts wander. I could hear my Grandfather's voice in my head. He was left handed and often got annoyed sometimes to the point of anger at the lack of consideration by those who were right handed, especially the way the whole world was geared to the right hander. Books, he said repeatedly, are written backwards! You should be able to read the books from back cover to the front and the writing should go from right to left and not left to right. He always read magazines backwards.
    It was this repeated complaint of his that was the clue he had given me to the notebooks. I had to start at the back and work from right to left to draw the text from the numbers. It was a good plan. I still didn't understand why it was so encrypted there was no clue in the opening few sentences. I hoped this would be revealed in time.
    I fell asleep thinking of him and awoke at 6am still slouched on the couch.
    Idiot I thought as I wiped drool from my mouth.
    I headed for the shower.

I decode
    The work on decoding the books took longer than my stay in Morecambe. It occupied me for the best part of the year. It was as you will gather time